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Ranadiel wrote:

The article doesn't address my biggest concern which is wha will happen if you buy the year long web content pack and then you decide you want to upgrade to the client pack when that pricing scheme becomes available.

It's been stated elsewhere that if you've paid for a year of the "online-only" content, and they go live with "D&DI Full" in six months, you will still ride out your six months of web-only content - with the option to upgrade to the full package if you so desire.

Hope that helps.

I believe it's been their top development priority, but it may not be the top "team" priority - in favor of getting paid (which is reasonable).

Perhaps "focus" would have been a better word.

Then again, maybe it has been temporarily bumped in the list while they work on getting linked up with Digital River. ~shrug~

KM wrote:

My thoughts as well.

I concur with others who say it is too soon to take this seriously.

$60 for a magazine subscription for which I have to invest additional money in printer supplies if I wish to have copies of the articles that can be used away from my computer? No thanks.

I may be willing to pay for the tools once they are available. But WoTC needs to demonstrate to me that they actually have the software development skills to pull this off before I'm going to start paying them for it.

Your priorities are also out of sync with my needs, which suggests you may be on a path that isn't going to satisfy me.

Just to summarize what we have now, and on the immediate horizon, and to explain how I feel about it as a customer:

Dragon and Dungeon Content: Excellent quality. But not worth the price of admission if the only thing I am going to receive is content in a digital form.

Compendium: Great idea that will probably be more useful as more splat books accumulate. But the interface is klunky, and you haven't worked out the kinks in the mechanism by which updated content gets added to the DDI compendium. Some of the PhB content in the compendium has been a welcom correction to the content in the PhB, but some of it consists of modifications to the wording of the PhB that, when taken at face value, break the mechanics. The Pact Boon powers that have been added to the compendium are an example of the latter. Whoever added that seems unaware of the fact that wording the pact boons in that way is inconsistent with the rules for Immediate actions. So quality control on the compendium seems to be spotty, at best.

Bonus Tools: these tools have no value. seeing these tools released lowered my faith in this effort rather than increasing it.

Character Builder: this will be good to have if it works. seeing that you want to start charging before you are even able to provide a date for when this core tool will enter a beta stage suggests to me that WoTC lacks the software resources to pull this off, unfortunately. I hope that isn't true. But seriously...you want money before you even have a date for a beta?? That's how software projects which are doomed to ultimately fail begin. I hope I am wrong, because I'd like this to succeed.

Character Visualizer: this is going to be about as useless to me as the current bonus tools are. The fact that you have this so close to the top or your priority list suggests that developing useful tools that will aid DMs and players in actual play is either not a priority for this project, or beyond the capabilities of the resources the company has comitted to the effort.

I'm happy for the answers to some of my questions but this bugs me:

...so you’ll probably get a couple of extra articles for free as we continue to publish three times per week...

Granted, articles for Dragon have been posted three times a week but the only thing posted for Dungeon this entire month has been an editorial. Where's the content?!

Fox Reeveheart wrote:

I don't care what explaination they give me. So it wasn't ready for september so you just decided to put it into paying october? RIIIIIIGHT. Again it's all about money.

I'm a little disappointed as well by the decision to start charging so early into this, well before it seems there is a solid grasp on consistently producing content for the mags... having said that, let's not fool ourselves about WotC's intention to make money. Of course they want to make money, they're not running the Benevolent Order of the Merciful Mindflayer, they're a business. While I'm sure the people that work for WotC and create products for it love what they do, they expect to buy groceries and feed families at the end of the week, and in order for them to get paid WotC has to charge for their product.

Still, I'm unsettled by the chaos that is emanating around so many of their products right now...